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It's exceptionally more powerful than existing SSDs when it comes to write operations, coming close to maxing out the 3Gb/s bandwidth of the SATA II interface in both directions in the ATTO tests.

It's also got the edge over the Agility 2. That's important, because there's no major price difference between the two different OCZ drives at the moment.

There's only one caveat, and that's with the size of drive that we tested.

An equally sized Kingston V+ at almost £100 less is cheap enough that the real world performance difference won't even factor into a buying decision.

The V+ is plenty fast enough for normal desktop use and gaming, and unless you're setting up a high performance webserver or doing a lot of HD video editing there's no need to splash out.

The sweet spot for SSDs right now, though, is between 60GB and 80GB.

That's enough to turbo charge your operating system and one or two games, while the rest of your data can be dumped on a separate HDD without any real performance penalty.

At that size, the OCZ Vertex 2 is the winner on all counts, performance and value, and the only choice you should make.

We liked:

OCZ's Vertex 2 is an outstanding drive on almost all counts whether its performance or value for money that you're after.

We disliked:

But unless you're setting up a dedicated multimedia workstation for cutting your first HD feature, you should probably save your money and opt for the 60GB version instead. And trust us, you'll be very, very happy with your choice.

Final word:

Excellent performance and value, even if the smart money is on the 60GB version.